Mount Kessler is one of the great land preservation stories in our community. I’ve been running on these trails since 2010 and have gotten to see the story unfold along the way.

Fayetteville has a great history of land preservation, dating back to Brooks-Hummel and Mount Sequoyah, some of the early Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association efforts, and more recently Centennial Park.

But over the last six to eight years, this effort has been largely dormant. I think we need to fund green infrastructure and land preservation the same way we’ve funded our trails for the last two decades.

When I moved back here in 2007, we had just a couple of trails in place. But for 20 years, we’ve funded this work annually and gone after grants and other matching dollars. That allowed us to grow our trail network to over 100 miles and make it a major part of Fayetteville’s character, something we’re very proud of.

We have an Enduring Green Network Master Plan that everyone can view on the city’s GIS page. We also have private residents who are willing to put up matching dollars for this type of effort.

When I’m on City Council, I’m going to advocate for annual funding through capital improvement dollars, our stormwater utility, or other budget allocations. That will allow us to preserve land consistently and match those investments with private dollars.

My hope is that, 20 years from now, we can look back and see that we consistently funded the Enduring Green Network and maintained that discipline for decades. That’s what it’s going to take if we’re really going to do this as a community.

We need to get out ahead of the development pressure on the great spaces we want to preserve. That’s going to be a major part of my focus on City Council.

If you want to learn more, you can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook.

And if you just want to learn more about our trails, you can find me on Strava, because I’m on there quite a bit as well.